Message from Jesse

-----Original Message-----
From: Jesse Brookshire
To: danny.smith@alethes.biz

My duty as a marine is to protect the weak and helpless from the strong and violent, those who cannot protect themselves.

My...duty. Just like it is a cooks job to cook and a janitors job to clean, it is my job to protect, to be a warrior.

I chose to be the greatest warrior our nation has to offer. .5 percent of our population choose to be a marine and 90 percent of those marines are NOT infantrymen.

I am a warrior.

The values that have been instilled in me are what will insure my success.

These values are what have made and maintained the success of the United States Marine Corps. Ask yourself what makes America so special and great. Wealth? Entertainment? Oil? Cool cars? All of these things can be obtained all over the world. America doesn't own every last natural resource in the world making it some kind of superpower.

We are no greater in that aspect then many other places all around the world.

So, what is it?

Values.

The values that this nation was founded upon. The same values that become more and more flexible, lenient and materialistic everyday. The more our traditional values change, the more dangerous America becomes, the more America becomes less special and unique.

The true fight is not against terrorists or fascists, it is against ourselves and demoralization.

I fight to protect not only the weak from the strong, but also the values that we have worked so hard to establish.

I pray that the rest of America who just like me!

Jesse Brookshire
USMC

Whoa…that hit home. I opened the door to my hotel room and there on the front page of USA Today was “Mortgage Crisis Seeps to Prime Loans.” Now that’s a great way to start the day….NOT. Is it any wonder as to why I almost NEVER watch the news? Not that I have my head in the sand, I just don’t need to be focusing TOO much on sensationalism. Do I need to pay enough attention to develop strategy scenarios based upon certain news events? Sure, absolutely. Do I need to know about current events? Some, but seriously, what does 99% of it matter? Not too much. I have to ask myself, how much do I want to let this influence me? Does this really effect me…I mean really?

Ok, focus on something I can control….me.

Seriously, in somewhat of a liberal sense, this headline does relate to my original subject of this message. As you might know, I’ve been at a Speed of Trust workshop this week. I’m not sure what I expected, but I had not considered the direct and personal impact; almost gut wrenching. I had assumed that because I’d been reading the book and practicing and talking about the 13 Behaviors for almost a year, that there would not be any big AHAs. Wrong. I’ve had to remember that “I choose to be frustrated or not.” Errrrrr.

This morning I’ve been pondering and praying about what has struck me the hardest (and there has been quite a bit; what is my biggest aha? What was the WOW or WHOA? Well, there have been many, but it was something said in the first 15 minutes that has kept coming back to me – “you are probably not going to learn anything new this week. Everything we are teaching is common sense, just not common practice.”

Hmmm. Not sure that I'm in 100% agreement, but it all hits close enough that the fallout is causing some damage. There are many familiarities in the book to other aspects of what we've been learning over the years. For instance, Behavior #10: Practice Accountability. Now that sounds familiar. Or #3: Create Transparency, #2: Demonstrate Respect.

Two “reallys!!!” I’ve had were the whole “branding” aspect and the “trust taxes vs trust dividends.”

We’ll be talking a great deal in the coming weeks about branding.

As to trust vs dividends, but for now think about how Mr. Covey teaches that when trust goes down, speed goes down, and expenses (costs) go up, thus, less profit; expense = trust = >speed = profit

Another recurring part of this Speed of Trust thing is how it starts with “Self-Trust.” (Dang, why can’t I read a book or take a seminar about fixing others??).

How does the newspaper headline relate? The “I’ll be the same 5 years from now…..” theme is resonating, if not pounding away, at me. We can’t control the headlines but we can control whether we read them or not and what we do with them. If I want to be different 5 weeks or 5 years from now, and I do, I have to change; I need to trust myself more, and I then need to trust others more. I need to have a “propensity towards Trust.

Hopefully, you have all been reading the book. I trust you have.

Can you share some examples of trust dividends? I’d love to hear about them.


P.R.O.V.I.D.E. Leadership,


Danny

I’d like to encourage you to read 2 things this morning;

the book summary of “360 Leadership” by John Maxwell and
the Focus and Reflection dated 4/16/2008.


I’d then like to hear what you took away from these readings. You can either email or post as a comment on today’s blog. And the blog allows you to be anonymous!


Thanks, Danny

I was traveling yesterday, by air (I’d rather drive). While on layovers, I always head to airport bookstores. Bookstores are culturally challenged and I like to see what’s being pushed that’s different from the local Barne&Nobles.

This time it was more of a renewed perspective on an existing problem: change (imagine that!)

Standing inside the doorway, surveying the crowd, and wondering if I dared walk in, I was drawn to a book of previously published articles. In this book was a reprint of an article I passed around corporate last year by Harvard Professor John P. Kotter. The article was titled, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail.” Professor Kotter wrote a book back in 1996 with a similar title. In this article he lists “8 Big Errors” companies make when transforming (fancy name for CHANGE). I was struck hard by 6 of the 8, but in particular Error #1: Not Establishing a Great Enough Sense of Urgency.

Kotter’s “Error #1” has caused further reflection about Floaters vs Seekers.

As a quick definition, a floater is someone who is just passing the time, getting through the drudgery of work; waiting for 5 o’clock so he/she can….jingle those keys.

For the definition of a seeker, I’ll borrow from Os Guiness; "....true seekers are different. On meeting them you feel their purpose, their energy, their integrity, their idealism, and their desire to close in on an answer. They have become seekers because something has spurred their quest for meaning, and they have to find an answer. True seekers are looking for something. They are people for whom life, or a part of life, has suddenly become a point of wonder, a question, a problem, or a crisis. This happens so intensely that they are stirred to look for an answer beyond their present answers and to clarify their position in life. However the need arises, and whatever it calls for, the sense of need consumes the searchers and launches them on their quest."

Those of you who have read Guiness and the concept from which he writes about seekers could think I’ve taken a deeply intense subject and made light of it. But, I believe my correlation is totally relevant. Seekers are exactly what Alethes needs right now. A Seeker has urgency about his/her work and it seeking to change something; even if it is wrong! Seekers are engaged in robust evaluation and correction.

We, as a team and as an individual, don’t have time to float. The time is now for new AUS files; the time is now for creating WOWs with our clients. Our clients have choices. You have choices. I could write all morning about taking Personal Accountability for how you talk to people, how you answer the phone, how you return phone calls, how you CREATE URGENCY, how you walk around looking for someone that needs assistance, how you FIND a client that needs assistance.

What choices are you going to make today?

I Pray that you to have a Great Sense of Urgency; be a Seeker.

P.R.O.V.I.D.E Leadership,

Danny

You might or might not be aware that today is the fortieth day after Easter; Christ’s resurrection. It was on the fortieth day that Christ ascended into Heaven to set at the right hand of the Father, our Lord God.

This event is recorded in Mark 16:19, Luke 24:50-53, and Acts 1:6-12. A summary of the test goes something like this…

So when they last met together, he led them out to the vicinity of Bethany. They asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “it is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

After the Lord Jesus had said this to them, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. He sat at the right had of God.

They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’


There are many amazing and awesome things about this event, but the two that is the most astonishing to me are;

Christ was flesh and blood, still, when this happened. He ascended into Heaven after walking around in a resurrected human body; He even ate fish when His apostles did not believe He was real and not a ghost or spirit.
He will come back the same way.


What a day that must have been!

Wow. What a whirlwind of a month! As we wrap up this month, our Agenda needs to include: paying attention to details, looking around you and seeing what needs to be improved, and asking “what can I do to make a difference?”

We’ve been through 30 days of new system installation, loss of our primary production lines, changes in investor guidelines, and decreased numbers. We were profitable last month and expect to be slightly profitable this month. One month ago we were drowning in post-funding guideline changes and it was scary. Yet, we kept on keeping on. We put our heads down, took personal accountability and behaved our way out of a literal mess. Let’s recognize that the mess was two fold; ours and the industry changes.

May will bring about a lot of changes; auditors – new processes – more AUS training – new product mixes – new underwriting methods – new pricing models – new strategies – heightened need for people performance. Again, let’s recognize how overwhelming this can be and decide now how to respond.

I’ve very Purposefully picked this time to bring QBQ and Personal Accountability back to the forefront and hope that everyone embraces this tool. We have come a long way and our survival depends upon our ability to behave well. Behavior is 100% your responsibility; not blame, but leading and influencing. It is your personal choice as to how you behave. My door, email, and phone is open for questions, concerns, and discussion; seek clarity.

We'll continue to focus on the 3 processes of People, Strategy, and Operations; an important part of this is how well we perform and how we gauge our performance. We'll talk a bit about this in the 1006 meeting today.

Thank Don and Betsy for the meal today. Every month you bring us lunch on the last day of the month and I appreciate it (even when it’s girl food!) Thanks Don…and thanks Betsy for putting up with us!

Danny

As you might know, I read quite a bit, but most of it just goes by the wayside unless I read it again and again. But! Every once in a while I’ll breeze through something (you know, there’s so much to read and so little time)…I’ll have a drifting thought specific to an article, or a piece of an article. This article has been the subject of that drift many times the past 3 weeks.

The following are excerpts from that article on Performance Appraisals.

"Performance evaluations are about as much fun as an annual physical exam for a fifty-year old male. At least the physical exam is useful!Few business activities create more havoc in the workplace than the "how are you doing" sessions most companies require their managers to foist on their workers. Managers hate to complete them, workers hate to receive them, and even the best of them tend to produce friction between the firm and the worker more often than they produce results. Still, this pivotal ritual in employee relations continues unabated, with companies trying out new systems hoping to discover one that works across the board."

"Beneath the surface of the evaluations, another problem erupts. In a culture where many of us define our worth by our jobs, the performance evaluation strikes at the core of our being."

For the complete article, go to http://www.hcbcworklife.com/ and click on Viewpoint on left navbar.

Danny